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Blackblade 04.0 - The Maze Under Midoro Mire
Leaving the barge that had brought them down the Ridge River from the city, the three adventurers set out west, following the river to the outskirts of the Midoro Mire. Hoping to find the man that Jack had mentioned in the swamp, they went forward without hesitation. The going was slow: the terrain was soft, wet and hard to navigate, impeding their progress. In the late morning, they found a small gang of goblins chattering and fooling about; the three opted to ignore them, and passed without notice. As noontime neared, a strange sight beckoned their attention. A large, circular patch of land had been entirely scorched some time ago, made all the more odd by the obviously poor conditions for fire. Closer inspection led them to realize that the burned ground was no random site: it was centered on a warren of kobolds, whose charred skeletons littered the ground, sunken into the mud. Their underground home of tunnels and nests was utterly abandoned: if any had survived this catastrophe, they were no longer nearby. While Raito and Caelan speculated on this occurrence, as it certainly seemed to be no accident or whim of nature, but rather the ferocity of some monster or magic user, Ragoom inspected the skeletons more closely. As he looked among the fragments of bone, ravaged by fire, water and the creatures of the swamp, he realized that many, if not all of these people, showed evidence of having been sliced through by a sharp blade. Confused but largely unconcerned, as whatever caused this seemed to have left long ago, Raito proceeded to detect the presence of magic deep beneath the earth. Ragoom, tying a rope about his waist, crawled into the tight, winding tunnels of the empty warren, investigating it for abandoned goods while Caelan and Raito enjoyed lunch. At the very depths, Ragoom did indeed find a box filled with all manner of interesting objects, particularly a significant amount of gold, a bright yellow shirt, and a magical wooden shield. Satisfied that they had collected all of value here, they moved on. As they walked along, trying desperately to stay on drier paths that seemed non-existent, Ragoom misstepped and fell through the ground. Apparently, he had stumbled upon the long-abandoned dwelling of a hermit, and had fallen through the old, moldering roof. Much of the discarded furniture and belongings were ruined from water and time, though they did find some money and a fancy-looking lyre among the mildewy remains. Dusk began to fall as the group came upon a sizable, mostly-dry hill that looked like a good campsite for the night. Ragoom took the first watch, and, though unsettled by the number of birds, amphibians, insects and other creatures making noise in the night, his watch was uneventful. Caelan, attentively taking the midnight watch, stood systematically at guard. In the dead of the night, he was startled by a loud battle cry, followed by a challenge directed to a "foul beast". Caelan tried to get the attention of the voice, likely that of the man they searched for, waking the others in the progress. Unfortunately, he never seemed to notice them and disappeared into the night. Deciding that wandering the swamps in the darkness was a poor idea, the three stayed at the camp. When Raito's turn for watch came, he saw and heard nothing of interest, but nearly twisted his ankle when he accidentally stepped in a hole. When he investigated further, he found that it was not merely a hole, but rather a tunnel entrance. Immediately suspecting the work of kobolds, he searched around, but found no trace of them. However, when he attempted to detect for magic, he was overwhelmed by a very powerful source beneath his feet. Waiting until morning, Raito explained to Ragoom and Caelan what he had discovered, and the group, deciding that it would be too difficult to try and find their way back should they leave, prepared to crawl into the tunnel to find what sort of magic could be producing such a powerful aura. Ragoom and Raito crawled into the entrance, while Caelan kept watch from the hill. As the prince and the priest attempted to navigate the passages, empty save for a plethora of traps and tricks, Caelan amused himself with fishing. Several times he thought he saw or heard something large in a nearby tree, but a series of wild and vicious thwacks with his extendable pole put a stop to its impudence. When the two finally made it to the bottom (some more gracefully than others), they were met by a lone kobold who introduced himself as Wizard. The room they found themselves in was rather large, and was mostly filled with an incredibly intricate and multi-tiered enchantment that reeked of evil intentions. Wizard, in a less than eloquent yet strikingly innocent fashion, relayed the fact that he had both made this arcane sigil and was protecting it at the behest of someone who he only named as "the sorta-white eyed guy": an armoured, masked figure who the mere mention of terrified the small reptilian fellow. Apparently, this man had arrived with some cohorts, told Wizard's family to build the maze they were currently in, and then told Wizard to make the enchantment. When it was completed, the kobolds were told to leave, and Wizard was commanded to stay; if he was to leave, or if anybody came near the enchantment, Wizard claimed that the sorta-white eyed man would come and enact horrible punishment on both him and his whole family. To prevent that, Wizard had apparently been sitting by himself in the deepest room for an indeterminable amount of time. After a short, increasingly frantic conversation, Raito and Ragoom decided that there was no way that they could effectively approach the enchantment without provoking the kobold, so Raito knocked him out with a swift blow to the head. The enchantment proved to be incredibly well-protected against mundane attempts to destroy it, and any effort of Raito's to determine its attributes led to a magically-induced lack of focus and headache. At the end, he was only able to determine two things about it: it was some form of incredibly powerful and well-warded arcane amplification spell, meant to enhance something elsewhere, and that what was before them was merely a fraction of the whole spell. Unsure of what to do next, Raito and Ragoom picked up the unconscious kobold and returned to the surface. Category:Banishment of the Blackblades